Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(57)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Days later the party burst under the cover of the forest, and this was easier going. And then the land began to rise, and the trees to peter out.

Soon they were climbing. They swung down from their mounts, all except for the queen, and picked their way uphil on foot.

They were nearly there, nearly there; and Katsa drove her companions fiercely, dragging the horses, emptying her mind of everything but their ferocious progress forward.

“I believe we’ve lamed one of the horses,” Skye cal ed up to her, early one morning when they were so close she could feel her body humming with it. She stopped and turned to look back. Skye gestured to the horse he was leading.

“See? I’m sure the poor beast is limping.”

The animal’s head drooped, and it sighed deeply through its nostrils. Katsa grasped for her patience. “It’s not limping,” she said. “It’s only tired, and we’re nearly there.”

“How can you say that when you haven’t even seen it take one step?”

“Wel , step, then.”

“I can’t until you’ve moved.”

Katsa glared at him, murderously. She clenched her teeth. “Hold on tight, Lady Queen,” she said to Bitterblue, who sat on her horse. She gripped the animal’s halter and yanked the beast forward.

“Stil doing your best to ruin the horses, I see.”

Katsa froze. The voice came from above rather than behind, and it didn’t quite sound like Skye. She turned.

“I thought it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all that,” he said – and there, he was there, standing straight, eyes glimmering, mouth twitching, and the path he’d plowed through the snow stretching behind him. Katsa cried out and ran, tackling Po so hard that he fel back into the snow and she on top of him. And he laughed, and held her tight, and she was crying; and then Bitterblue came and threw herself squealing on top of them; and Skye came and helped them all up. Po embraced his cousin properly. He embraced his brother, and they messed up each other’s hair and laughed at each other and embraced again. And then Katsa was in his arms again, crying hot tears into his neck, and holding him so tightly he complained he could not breathe.

Po shook the hands of the smiling, exhausted guards and led the party, lame horse and all, up to his cabin.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The cabin was clean, and in better repair than it had been when they’d found it. A stack of wood stood outside the door; a fire burned brightly in the fireplace; the cabinet stillstood crookedly on three legs, but the dust was gone: a handsome bow hung on the wall. Katsa absorbed all this in a glance. And that was enough of that, for it was Po she wanted to fil her eyes with.

He walked smoothly, with his old ease. He seemed strong. Too thin, but when she commented on it, he said, “Fish aren’t particularly fattening, Katsa, and I’ve eaten little but fish since you left. I can’t tell you how sick to the skies I am of fish.” They brought out bread for him then, and apples, and dried apricots and cheese, and spread it across the table.

He ate, and laughed, and declared himself to be in raptures.

“The apricots come from Lienid,” Katsa said, “by way of Suncliff, and Lienid again, and a place in the middle of the Lienid seas, and finally Monport.”

He grinned at her, and his eyes caught the light of the fire in the fireplace, and Katsa was very happy. “You have a story to tell me,” he said, “and I can see it has a happy ending. But will you start at the beginning?”

And so they started at the beginning. Katsa supplied the major points, and Bitterblue the details. “Katsa made me a hat of animal furs,”

Bitterblue said. “Katsa fought a mountain lion.” Katsa made snowshoes. Katsa stole a pumpkin.

Bitterblue listed Katsa’s achievements one by one, as if she were bragging about her older sister; and Katsa didn’t mind.

The amusing parts of the tale made it easier to relate the grim.

It was during the story of what had happened at Po’s castle that Katsa’s mind caught on something that had nagged at her. Po was distracted.

He watched the table instead of the people speaking; his face was absent, he wasn’t listening. At the very moment she recognized his inattention he raised his eyes to her. For an instant he seemed to see her and focus on her, but then he stared emptily into his hands again. She could have sworn a kind of sadness settled into the lines of his mouth.

Katsa paused in her story, suddenly – strangely – frightened. She studied his face, but she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for. “The long and the short of it is that Leck had us under his spel ,” she said, “until I had one flash of clarity and killed him.” I’ll tell you the truth of what really happened later, she thought to him.

He winced, perceptibly, and she was alarmed; but an instant later he was smiling as if nothing was wrong, and she wondered if she’d imagined it. “And then you came back,” he said cheerily.

“As fast as we could,” Katsa said, biting her lip, confused. “And now I’ve a ring to return to you. Your castle is a gorgeous place, just as you said.”

The pain that broke across his face, the misery, was so acute that she gasped. It vanished as quickly as it had come but she’d seen it this time, she knew she’d seen it, and she could no longer mask her alarm. She shot up from her seat and reached out to him, not certain what she was going to do or say.

Po rose, too – did he check his balance? She wasn’t sure, but she thought he might have. He took her hand and smiled. “Come out hunting with me, Katsa,” he said. “You can try the bow I made.”

His voice was light, and Skye and Bitterblue were smiling. Katsa felt that she was the only person in the world with any idea that something was wrong. She forced a smile. “Of course,” she said. “I’d love to.”

———

“What’s wrong?” she asked, the instant they’d left the cabin behind.

He smiled slightly. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Katsa climbed hard and bit back her feeling. They tromped through a path in the snow she supposed Po had broken.

They passed the pool. The waterfal was a mass of ice, with only the slightest living trickle in its middle.

“Did my fish trap work for you?”

“It worked beautiful y. I stilluse it.”

“Did his soldiers search the cabin?”

“They did.”

“You made it to the cave all right, despite your injury?”

“I was feeling much better by then. I made it easily.”

“But you would have been cold and wet.”

“They didn’t stay long, Katsa. I returned to the cabin soon after and built up the fire.”

Katsa climbed a rocky rise. She grasped a thin tree trunk and pulled herself onto a hil ock. A long, flat rock jutted up from the untouched snow.

She plowed over to it and sat down. He followed and sat beside her. She considered him.

He didn’t look at her.

“I want to know what’s wrong,” she said.

He pursed his lips, and stillhe didn’t look at her. His voice was carefully matter-of-fact. “I wouldn’t force your feelings from you, if you didn’t want to share them.”

She stared at him, eyes wide. “True. But I wouldn’t lie to you, as you’re lying now when you say nothing’s wrong.”

A strange expression came over his face. Open, vulnerable, as if he were a child of ten years, trying to keep from crying. Her throat ached to see that look in his face. Po – He winced, and the expression vanished. “Don’t, please,” he said. “It makes me dizzy, when you talk to me in my mind. It hurts my head.”

She swal owed, and tried to think of what to say. “Your head stillhurts, from your fal ?”

“Occasional y.”

“Is that what’s wrong?”

“I’ve told you, nothing’s wrong.”

She touched his arm. “Po, please – ”

“It’s nothing worth your worry,” he said, and he brushed her hand away.

And now she was shocked and hurt, and tears stung her eyes. The Po she remembered didn’t flick away her concern, he didn’t flinch from her touch. This wasn’t Po; this was a stranger; and there was something missing here that had been there before. She reached into the neck of her coat and pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out to him.

“This is yours,” she said.

He didn’t even look at it; his eyes were glued to his hands. “I don’t want it.”

“What in the Middluns are you talking about? It’s your ring.”

“You should keep it.”

She stared at him, disbelieving. “Po, what makes you think I would ever keep your ring? I don’t know why you gave it to me in the first place. I wish you hadn’t.”

His mouth was tight with unhappiness, and stillhe stared into his hands. “At the time I gave it to you, I did so because I knew I might die. I knew Leck’s men might kill me and that you didn’t have a home. If I died I wanted you to have my home. My home suits you,” he said, with a bitterness that stung her, and that she couldn’t understand.

She found that she was crying. She wiped tears from her face, furiously, and turned away from him, because she couldn’t stand the sight of him staring stone-faced into his hands. “Po, I beg you to tell me what’s the matter.”

“Is it so wrong that you should keep the ring? My castle is isolated, in a wild corner of the world. You’d be happy there. My family would respect your privacy.”

“Have you gone raving mad? What are you going to do once I’ve taken your home and your possessions? Where are you going to live?”

His voice was very quiet. “I don’t want to go back to my home. I’ve been thinking of staying here, where it’s peaceful, and far away from everyone. I-I want to be alone.”

She gaped at him, her mouth open.

“You should go on with your life, Katsa. Keep the ring. I’ve said I don’t want it.”

She couldn’t speak. She shook her head, woodenly, then reached out and dropped the ring into his hands.

He stared at it, then sighed. “I’ll give it to Skye,” he said, “to take back to my father. He can decide what to do with it.”

He stood, and this time she was certain he checked his balance. He trudged away from her, his bow in hand. He caught hold of the root of a shrubbery and pulled himself onto a ledge of rock. She watched as he climbed into the mountains, and away from her.

———